Beacon Broadside: A Project of Beacon Presstag:typepad.com,2003:weblog-14005452017-12-07T16:44:32-05:00Ideas, opinions, and personal essays from respected writers, thinkers, and activists. A project of Beacon Press, an independent publisher of progressive ideas since 1854.TypePadA Perilous Time, a Promising Movementtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54ed2b7aa883301bb09de2389970d2017-12-07T16:44:32-05:002017-12-07T16:40:20-05:00By Frances Moore Lappé and Adam Eichen: “The system is rigged!” is now an angry, bipartisan cry, intensifying as Trump bows to big-donor interests and deepens distrust of government. But here’s the worst part. Not only has big-donor influence blocked life-saving public actions, from worker safety to climate change, but in recent decades political donors have gotten savvier. They’ve been able not only to bend policy for their own benefit, but, increasingly, to remake the rules of democracy itself to serve their interests. Here’s a taste of what we mean.Beacon Broadside

“The system is rigged!” is now an angry, bipartisan cry, intensifying as Trump bows to big-donor interests and deepens distrust of government.

But here’s the worst part. Not only has big-donor influence blocked life-saving public actions, from worker safety to climate change, but in recent decades political donors have gotten savvier. They’ve been able not only to bend policy for their own benefit, but, increasingly, to remake the rules of democracy itself to serve their interests.

Here’s a taste of what we mean.

Since 2010, when a big-money-empowered Tea Party swept Republicans into Congress and statehouses, twenty-three states have enacted laws making it harder to vote. To solidify gains, they’ve gerrymandered state and congressional districts so thoroughly that in many state and congressional races competition for office—the heart of democracy—is effectively dead.

Democracy shrinks further as those elected by relying on huge sums from the top one percent form a political class with little need to respond to the real concerns of most Americans.

Citizens, however, are not sitting idly watching our democracy go under. A citizens movement, what we call the Democracy Movement, is pursuing all angles to fight back and to take our democracy forward.

In Wisconsin, for example, teacher-turned-lawyer Wendy Sue Johnson and eleven other Wisconsin citizens became plaintiffs in a case now before the Supreme Court that could spell the end of partisan gerrymandering. The practice, said Johnson, allows “elected officials to choose their voters instead of the other way around.” Legal challenges in other states are targeting voter identification laws, proven to lower voter participation in vulnerable communities.

Increasingly, it’s dawning on Americans that “issues” they once thought of as wonky or dry touch the heart of it all: whose voice can be heard on the biggest questions of our time.

The Democracy Movement is realizing real success—success that may have been missed by those shaken after Election Day 2016. On that day, unknown to most Americans, fourteen of seventeen state and local pro-democracy ballot initiatives passed, from public financing in South Dakota to ranked-choice voting in Maine. True, some face legal and legislative challenges, but they prove that citizens are stepping up for democracy with new vigor.

One of the most significant of the Democracy Movement’s legislative advances is automatic voter registration (AVR). Sound wonky? AVR just means that any time citizens interact with specific governmental agencies, like the Department of Motor Vehicles, they get registered. It’s simple, less error-prone, and saves a lot of money.

And if you think it is just small-potatoes reform, think again. In 2015 Oregon became the first state to adopt automatic voter registration, and in 2016 almost 272,000 Oregonians registered for the first time, two-thirds through the new, automatic process. And, of the newly registered, thirty-three percent voted—an incredible success. In all, between 2012 and 2016, turnout in Oregon grew more than in any other state.

Now ten states plus the District of Columbia have jumped on board. Moreover, in Nevada, an AVR ballot initiative is underway and in Massachusetts a legislative campaign is gaining momentum.

The successes of a rising Democracy Movement are happening because more and more Americans get it: No matter what our specific issue passion, we now see that we can’t move it forward without fixing the rules of our democracy itself.

On this point, Josh Silver, founder of Represent.Us, an organization working to get big money out of politics, once chided us: “You don’t have to abandon your issue in order to work for democracy. You can, you know, love two children at once.” In other words, we can stay loyal to the issue closest to our heart—whether advancing racial justice, defending the environment, or ensuring a livable wage—while also act on the underlying crisis weakening our democracy.

With this liberating insight, Silver, along with millions of Americans, is part of a bipartisan, multi-generational, and culturally diverse groundswell—the first such broad yet focused citizen movement in living memory.

The Democracy Movement broke new ground in 2013, when some of the biggest social-cause players in America—from the NAACP, Common Cause, and Sierra Club to the Communications Workers of America and Greenpeace—had their own “two-child” aha-moment. Together, they joined hands and took the leap, forming a unique organization-coalition blend, the Democracy Initiative, committed to a common democracy-reform agenda.

In uniting such diverse groups, Sierra Club president Mike Brune told us he saw the chance to “create a really powerful coalition and counter-balance all these billions of dollars coming from the Koch brothers and other oil and coal executives.”

Four short years later, the Democracy Initiative is now a full-blown organization-coalition of more than sixty organizations devoted to a vast array of causes, all pledging to engage also in democracy-reform campaigns. Led by former labor leader Wendy Fields, it now represents thirty million Americans.

Democracy Initiative creates a network of relationships so that groups know they’ve got each other’s back; confident they can count on each other to rally together in critical moments, regardless of each member’s central focus.

Two of its newest members highlight Democracy Initiative’s breadth.

They are New York’s Working Families Party and Corporate Accountability International, a leading watchdog organization that has challenged corporate power for decades. A “lasting victory on issue areas like reining in corporate power, tackling climate change, and advancing racial justice depends on a thriving democracy,” Executive Director Patti Lynn explained. “The cross-movement unity that the Democracy Initiative is building has the power to transform politics as we know it, restore the promise of democracy, and help us all win more, faster.”

Another significant shift in this growing movement is that veterans in the democracy-reform trenches and newcomers alike are taking solidarity on democracy reforms to a deeper level. Some groups specialize in restoring and protecting voting rights, while others tackle money in politics. But both now increasingly see their unity: that getting big money out of politics means little if the right to vote is not guaranteed, and vice versa.

In all this ferment, we see the Democracy Movement becoming a true “movement of movements.” Under a common canopy of hope, groups are simultaneously tackling voting rights, money in politics, gerrymandering reform, ballot access, and election security.

So in this moment of unprecedented threat to our democracy, a rising Democracy Movement embodies hope in action, rewarding all those jumping in with the thrill of knowing their action is upholding the most noble of American values, democracy itself.

About the Authors

Frances Moore Lappé, author of the multimillion-selling Diet for a Small Planetand seventeen other books, is a recipient of the Right Livelihood Award, the “Alternative Nobel.” Follow her on Twitter at @fmlappe and visit her website.

Adam Eichen is a Democracy Fellow at the Small Planet Institute, cofounded by Lappé, and a board member of Democracy Matters, and he served as deputy communications director for Democracy Spring. Lappé and Eichen, separated by generations, are united in the movement for a living democracy and work together in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Follow him on Twitter and @AdamEichen.

Ditching Democracy’s Bad Raptag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54ed2b7aa883301bb09db9c0f970d2017-11-29T16:14:18-05:002017-11-29T17:01:34-05:00By Frances Moore Lappé and Adam Eichen: In today’s fraught and frightened America, the word “democracy” could well evoke the rolling of eyes, a blank stare, or wide-eyed incredulity. Certainly not the pitter-patter of hearts. But what if Americans were convinced that all we care most about—from our kids’ future to the immediate need for a decent job or safe drinking water—depended on falling in love with democracy? Might more of us at least be open to the possibility of taking the leap? Something like that happened for us.Beacon Broadside

In today’s fraught and frightened America, the word “democracy” could well evoke the rolling of eyes, a blank stare, or wide-eyed incredulity. Certainly not the pitter-patter of hearts.

But what if Americans were convinced that all we care most about—from our kids’ future to the immediate need for a decent job or safe drinking water—depended on falling in love with democracy? Might more of us at least be open to the possibility of taking the leap?

Something like that happened for us. When it truly sank in that democracy by and for the people is essential to what we most value, our emotions began to ignite. Yet, it’s tough to get to this place, as democracy is commonly cast as shabby—the best we flawed humans can do, but hardly worthy of devotion.

We’ve come to see such an assumption as not just wrong but dangerous, for it dims our confidence in democracy just as it’s never been more necessary. So let’s reexamine additional faulty assumptions about democracy as if our life depended on it—because it does.

Here are three.

One, democracy is out of reach because it requires that humans overcome our self-centered nature.

Think again. Our species evolved in tightly knit tribes in which we became by far the most social of primates, with a finely tuned sense of fairness as well as proclivities for empathy and cooperation. Our social nature shows up in research suggesting that humans are happier when giving rather than receiving and happier when outcomes for others are not extremely different from one’s own.

Of course, humans are also capable of callous disregard, selfishness, and even unspeakable cruelty. But here is what’s now clear: Whether our pro-social capacities show up depends in large measure on the social rules and norms we together create and uphold.

If all human behavior were innate and fixed, we certainly wouldn’t see the vast differences across cultures in crime rates or other anti-social behavior, or in the functioning of democracy. Yet, they are enormous. The US homicide rate is, for example, seven times that of other “high-income” countries. An annual ranking of perceptions of electoral integrity worldwide, by a scholarly project based in Harvard and the University of Sydney, puts the US 55th among more than 150 countries and almost dead last among western democracies.

Surely, therefore, our country’s faltering democracy has nothing to do with fixed human nature, but rather everything to do with human culture, i.e. what we actively create.

Authors of the US constitution seemed confident that we are equipped to create rules for the common good, those bringing forth the best and keeping the worst in check. Otherwise, surely these learned gentlemen would have considered it absurd to establish a republic “to promote the general Welfare,” as stated in the preamble of our constitution. (The question of who was included in the definition of “general welfare” is a huge question, of course, one that fortunately has not been static.)

Two, we absorb in our culture the notion that democracy is a dull, burdensome duty—the bland spinach we must force down so we can get to what we really want, the yummy dessert of personal freedom to do as we please.

But freedom from interference is only the beginning. Stuck there, we could miss a much deeper aspect that only democracy can offer: citizens’ freedom toparticipate in power. As we move from the narrow, negative freedom of “Get out of my way” to the positive freedom of “I have a real say,” much changes.

We can grasp that while rights and privileges protect us, it is in our duties and responsibilities that much of our power lies. We come to see that fixing America’s democracy deficits—with avenues for each of us—is all about realizing our power.

Therefore, instead of democracy understood as a boring, annoying “you should,” the practice of “living democracy” becomes an exhilarating calling, often able to unlock parts of ourselves that we didn’t even know existed. In democratic engagement one discovers democracy’s inherent passion, dignity, and promise.

Three and finally, a real downer is the lament that democracy is losing favor almost everywhere because, well, it’s failing.

Worldwide, positive sentiment about democracy’s capacity to solve society’s problems is indeed waning. Voter turnout in almost all countries has fallen significantly in the past few decades. And in this country, one in six Americans has become so disillusioned with democracy as to approve of the idea of military rule. That’s up from one in fifteen in 1995.

But is it democracy that’s failing? In our case, it is the lack of democracy that’s taking us down—the growing crisis of concentrated wealth controlling our political choices and its orchestrated efforts to rig rules through voter suppression and gerrymandering of electoral districts.

We can join efforts to stop money’s corruption of politics and anti-democratic policies like voter ID laws and other unnecessary barriers to voting. To make engaging easier, our Small Planet institute and our partner, the Democracy Initiative—made up of sixty national organizations representing issues from labor to racial justice to the environment—have created a new tool: the online Field Guide to the Democracy Movement. Here you’ll discover a rich array of organizations leading the way and learn about cutting-edge actions enabling all of us to find our democracy voices.

Millions across the United States and the world are also fighting to claim and reclaim their democracies. In this historic moment, they are uncovering the truth about democracy—that in acting together we realize our species’ highest and proven potential as we replace isolation and a sense of futility with power, purpose, and connection.

About the Authors

Frances Moore Lappé, author of the multimillion-selling Diet for a Small Planetand seventeen other books, is a recipient of the Right Livelihood Award, the “Alternative Nobel.” Follow her on Twitter at @fmlappe and visit her website.

Adam Eichen is a Democracy Fellow at the Small Planet Institute, cofounded by Lappé, and a board member of Democracy Matters, and he served as deputy communications director for Democracy Spring. Lappé and Eichen, separated by generations, are united in the movement for a living democracy and work together in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Follow him on Twitter and @AdamEichen.

Dare for Democracy: Nine Steps to Ignite Power and Connectiontag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54ed2b7aa883301b8d2aedaf1970c2017-09-27T13:38:35-04:002017-09-27T13:30:56-04:00By Frances Moore Lappé and Adam Eichen: Celebrate democracy. Invite local musicians to a public park or library event room to share and teach songs related to freedom and democracy. And if you have the clout of an organization behind you, goad them to go for the spectacular. Imagine tens of thousands in a big-city stadium celebrating democracy. Wouldn’t Bruce Springsteen be up for that? We love the idea of audiences honoring Leonard Cohen by chanting and swaying to his powerful “Democracy,” with its refrain “Democracy is coming to the USA.” Concerts with a message have an impressive history.Beacon Broadside

Frances Moore Lappé and Adam Eichen’s Daring Democracy: Igniting Power, Meaning, and Connection for the America We Want offers the hope and empowerment we need during a divisive and wrenching moment in our history. While many may feel voiceless and powerless in the face of an administration working to dismantle civil liberties and our very notion of democracy, Lappé and Eichen argue that standing up for democracy is necessary—and that it can provide us with a much-needed feeling of power. Together they lay out the history and players in the Anti-Democracy movement, explore the strategies needed to reclaim democracy, and introduce us to the individuals and organizations taking steps to make real change. Here are a few ideas they list at the end of the book to embolden us to join forces and take back our power.

***

1. Celebrate democracy. Invite local musicians to a public park or library event room to share and teach songs related to freedom and democracy. And if you have the clout of an organization behind you, goad them to go for the spectacular. Imagine tens of thousands in a big-city stadium celebrating democracy. Wouldn’t Bruce Springsteen be up for that? We love the idea of audiences honoring Leonard Cohen by chanting and swaying to his powerful “Democracy,” with its refrain “Democracy is coming to the USA.” Concerts with a message have an impressive history. Some will recall the 1980s’ “We Are the World” concerts. And decades ago, singer Harry Chapin created concerts in part devoted to alleviating world hunger. Between sets, Joe Collins and I, Frances, jumped on stage with Harry to share our ideas to help the antihunger movement grow. What about a democracy version?

2. Become a hub for multiplying power and building community. The Indivisible website became an avenue for a dear friend, Janet Surrey, to participate in one of its 4,500 groups nationwide that sprouted after the 2016 election. In the Boston area, under the banner “Re-creating Democracy,” Jan meets people with a range of issue passions. In monthly meetings she loves hearing their action updates. Members support each other in learning together and are also there to pitch in on each other’s key passion when a big-leverage moment arises—a great example of what we mean by the budding “movement of movements.” Hosts rotate, and once when a host forgot it was her turn, folks arriving for the meeting didn’t just go home disappointed. They met on her porch and had a great time anyway. And, Jan tells us, it was a cold day!

3. Together, get voices of citizens heard. Submit letters to the editor and op-eds to news outlets. Here, we take inspiration from Citizens Climate Lobby. Through its many local groups networked nationally via monthly conference calls, its members’ total of published letters to the editor rose from thirty-six in 2010 to more than three thousand five years later; and op-eds published went from twenty-nine to 547. Incredible. (And remember, even if you don’t get published, somebody at the news outlet has read what you have to say.)

4. Become a citizen lobbyist, both by phone and in personal visits. Just about everyone feels tongue-tied the first time. But don’t worry, you can get ideas from “scripts” offered by groups such as Move On and adapt them to your voice and angle. Create your own citizen-lobbying day. Make an appointment with your legislators and bring friends and family. Take photos, write up your experience, and share it.

5. If you are an employer, offer your staff paid time to fulfill their roles as citizens. Since politicians’ offices are open only during workdays, offering employees, say, fifteen minutes to call their representatives sends an important signal about community, responsibility, and citizens’ power. Of course, it can be done in a way that no one ever feels judged or coerced.

6. Organize highly visible citizen deliberations to choose the best long-term strategies, priorities, and immediate actions. Why not host “democracy for dinner” evenings in homes, cafés, or schools, facilitated to encourage curiosity and sharing about solutions? More formally, approach your local high school principal, religious group, or library to volunteer to help organize a debate or “democracy dialogue” on solutions to problems of money in politics and voting rights suppression. For ideas, check out the resources of the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation.

If you have clout in a local, state, or national civic body, why not encourage something on a bigger scale? Perhaps citizen panels with randomly selected participants, all asking: how do we get money out of politics and our voices in? A website could document which strategies turn out to be most appealing to participants and invite visitors to weigh in.

7. Create inviting, intimate spaces for sharing stories. In our homes, houses of worship, and community centers, we can create opportunities for people to share concerns and solutions, including stories about being heard or silenced. “[W]e had not known the extent of others’ pain and suffering,” writes the Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II, “until we came together to listen. We did not know how much we had in common until we told our stories of struggle to one another.”

8. Create new public spaces for community talk, “People’s Corners.” In well-traveled public spaces in towns and cities everywhere, imagine the “democracy buzz” generated by citizens creating a mashup of street theater, London’s Hyde Park Speakers’ Corner, and facilitated exchange, along with opportunities for public commitments to act on behalf of democracy. (I, Frances, remember standing on a soapbox in Rittenhouse Square in Philly, sharing my feelings about the war in Vietnam. The power of that moment stirs me to this day.)

We can draw from the experience of Brazil’s Theater of the Oppressed, which blurs the line between spectator and actor, encouraging audience members to jump in. We can embolden participants to seek and propose answers together, even elevating the people’s solutions to policy actions.6 A People’s Corner could stage a debate on our nation’s democracy crisis; or, organizers could pose a question to everyone gathered, then invite folks to turn to a stranger nearest them to take turns responding, then reflecting on their differences.

9. Make a personal, shared pledge to act. Most of us find the first step the hardest. Here’s an idea that can help: because stating one’s commitment to a specific action, and doing so publicly, can be powerfully motivating, at a People’s Corner or other gatherings, organizers could distribute pledge cards on which each person is invited to write down one commitment to act for democracy. Or cards could be prepared for elected officials, asking them to pledge support for nondiscriminatory policing, automatic voter registration, same-day registration, action on climate change, or public financing of elections.

Frances Moore Lappé, author of the multimillion-selling Diet for a Small Planetand seventeen other books, is a recipient of the Right Livelihood Award, the “Alternative Nobel.” Follow her on Twitter at @fmlappe and visit her website.

Adam Eichen is a Democracy Fellow at the Small Planet Institute, cofounded by Lappé, and a board member of Democracy Matters, and he served as deputy communications director for Democracy Spring. Lappé and Eichen, separated by generations, are united in the movement for a living democracy and work together in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Follow him on Twitter and @AdamEichen.

Massachusetts Can Lead Our Democracy into the Twenty-First Centurytag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54ed2b7aa883301b8d28cc0a3970c2017-06-14T16:35:17-04:002017-06-14T16:31:26-04:00By Adam Eichen
For the last nine months, we have assessed the state of our democracy. In our search, we confirmed the now seemingly intuitive notion that Americans across the country are upset, for they feel increasingly powerless, that their voice does not matter, and that the political system does not represent them. But we also found something underreported—that people are eagerly yearning and demonstrating for solutions to make our democracy better represent all voices and work more efficiently. In fact, there is nothing less than a Democracy Movement emerging in our country.Beacon Broadside

Author’s Note: On June 8, 2017, I offered the following testimony to the Joint Committee on Election Laws at the Massachusetts statehouse in support of automatic voter registration (S. 373 and H. 2091). If passed, Massachusetts would become the ninth state (not including Washington, DC) to adopt automatic voter registration.

***

Thank you to the chairs of this committee and its members.

I sit here today honored and humbled to share my views on automatic voter registration with the Joint Committee on Election Laws. I am also thrilled to testify on behalf of the two organizations with which I work: Small Planet Institute, a Cambridge-based, pro-democracy think tank, and Democracy Matters, a student-powered national organization with chapters across the country working to restore our democracy.

Many experts have already testified about why automatic voter registration is good policy. And many more will do so after I finish talking with you today.

They have and will explain how automatic voter registration would register many of the almost seven hundred thousand eligible Massachusetts residents not already registered. They have and will detail how automatic registration would reduce human error by using digital registration forms, by more frequently updating records when people move, and by eliminating duplicate records. And, they have and will recount how automatic voter registration would save Massachusetts millions of dollars. That automatic voter registration costs only 3 cents per registrant compared to $3.54 for each paper registration is sure to be a common theme throughout today. And such positive benefits are only the beginning.

But I was not compelled to testify today to recount facts about this innovative reform.

Rather it was to share what I discovered in my research for my book Daring Democracy, coauthored with the founder of Small Planet Institute, Frances Moore Lappé.

For the last nine months, we have assessed the state of our democracy. In our search, we confirmed the now seemingly intuitive notion that Americans across the country are upset, for they feel increasingly powerless, that their voice does not matter, and that the political system does not represent them.

But we also found something underreported—that people are eagerly yearning and demonstrating for solutions to make our democracy better represent all voices and work more efficiently. In fact, there is nothing less than a Democracy Movement emerging in our country.

Across the US, citizen groups spanning partisan affiliation are working together to push the boundaries of democracy. From public financing of elections to gerrymandering reform, people are mobilizing and reengaging in politics. For someone who cares deeply about this country, this is nothing less than enthralling.

But what surprised us more than anything is the enthusiasm across the country for automatic voter registration. Just since 2015, eight states and Washington, DC, have enacted this common sense reform. And the results speak for themselves: more registered voters, higher turnout on Election Day, and more faith in our electoral system. And when we’ve gone on the radio or talked with citizen groups, describing automatic voter registration provokes a groan of “Of course, that makes so much sense.” We’ve seen it on their faces and in their voices: How is this not a thing already?

The people of Massachusetts, much like those in the forty-nine other states, are ready for automatic voter registration.

To close, I want to turn back the clock to 1801 when Massachusetts became the first state to mandate voter registration. For political stakeholders of the day, much like for those today, voter verification was a necessity. Voter registration made sense. But in the two centuries following this decision, voter registration unnecessarily became a means of disenfranchising Americans that influential politicians did not want to vote. In the post-Reconstruction South this meant African American citizens, and in the North, it was immigrants and citizens of lower socioeconomic levels. Because of these laws, countless eligible voters were denied the franchise.

And still today, minority groups and lower income populations across the country and in Massachusetts are registered at significantly lower rates than the rest of the population.

Massachusetts has the chance today to lead the nation on an effort to rectify the wrongs committed in the past. If and when Massachusetts decides to lead, history will look back at the Bay State and remember it as one of the forbearers of the movement to bring our democracy into the twenty-first century, creating a system of government that includes and empowers all residents of the state, regardless of race, gender, or socioeconomic status.

If there is one thing I’ve learned in my survey of America’s democracy, it is that when bold state leaders are willing to take chances, politicians in other states not only take notice, but more often than not, they also follow suit.

About the Author

Adam Eichen is a writer, researcher, and political organizer working to build a democracy that represents and empowers all voices in society. He serves as a Democracy Fellow at Small Planet Institute and as a member of the Democracy Matters board of directors. In 2016, he was appointed deputy communications director for Democracy Spring, a historic national mobilization comprising more than a hundred organizations working for campaign-finance and voting rights reform. Follow him on Twitter at @AdamEichen.